Eating Habits and How to Improve When and What You Eat

   I have written several hubs about about habits, addictions, and how to go about  coming to some workable solutions concerning these things.  Most of it has had to do with habits and addictions like with drugs.

   It was brought to my attention by one of my readers that left a comment for me, that there is also the subject of bad eating habits, and would some of the tips I have given you all to break bad habits could be applied to bad eating habits.  I have been giving it some thought, as I too have bad eating habits, and there are many things that must be thought over and figured out before the same techniques can work in this area.

   Lets go into the various areas that must be addressed before we can just simply break a bad habit, for I believe that bad eating habits is too general to be solved by approaching it just like that.

When raising my kids, I made up my mind that I was not going to force them to eat. Unless they were hungry, I was not going to feed them. I believe that this is the basic problem when it come to our eating habit. We have had years of training telling us that we should eat when we are lonely, depressed, bored, and many other reasons. The main thing we all need to ask ourselves before we eat anything is "Am I hungry?" I think that if we are honest with ourselves and only eat when hungry, this will address about half of our eating problems.

The other half is what we eat. So many Americans, (and I say americans because I have watched not only my friends, family and acquaintances, but the general public when I am out) do not eat the right foods when they do eat out of hunger. Just from what I have viewed, I would guesstamate that almost 80 to 90% of the time people incorporate uneeded refined sugar into every meal. Instead of having a plain old egg sandwich, people tend to have donuts or super sweet cereal for breakfast, Snacks especially seem to be sweets, cookies, Icecream, fruit pies, pop tarts, candy, all fill in the gap instead of fruits, vegetables, or bagels, hard boiled eggs, or anything without sugar.

Getting back to the habits we have formed, and just assuming that we are not talking about what we eat, but looking at why and when we eat. Good eating habits are learned. If we eat out of boredom, or comfort, we must address these issues before we are ever going to be able to correct the issue of the eating habits we have formed. I beleive, and I am going to repeat myself again, if we only eat when we are hungry, assuming we will eat the right foods, we will have our bad habits whipped.

   If you have followed my ideas on how to work with breaking the habits and addictions in your life, you will know that part of it consists of writing, three times a day, and a minimum of 50 each time, the things you want your subconscious mind to remember.  For habit such as smoking it is easy to know exactly what to write.  Correcting bad eating habits is a little more  complicated, for we want to be sure to write the exact thing that will help us with our problem.

   Suggestions vary but here are a few suggestions, according to what problems may lay before you.  If you have a habit of eating when you are bored you might want to write things like--

• When I feel bored I will go outside.
• When I feel bored I am going to work on my project.
• When I have the urge to eat out of boredom food will taste discusting.
• If I feel like eating outside of mealtimes I will call a friend

Any of these kinds of sentences might work, or you might even want to write two of them to make sure you get it right.  if you are eating for comfort, when you are stressed out or under pressure of some kind, you might want to write something like this--

• Eating food does not make me feel better or relieve stress.
• Food is not my friend, but only to releive hunger.
• When under pressure food only adds to my problems.

Perhaps a good sentence to go with one of the above would be--"I will only eat food when I feel hunger."  or maybe just that would  work.  This is a very individual problem for everybody does things in their lives for very different reasons.  Just think this through, be honest with yourself, and take it from there.

One thing for sure is the fact that you must get your subconscious mind to retain the fact that food is only nutrition to sustain strenghth and health for your body.  Nothing more--and food should only be eaten when you are hungry. 

ALWAYS, EACH AND EVERY TIME YOU HAVE FOOD BEFORE YOU, BEFORE YOU TAKE ONE BITE, STOP AND ASK YOURSELF--AM i HUNGRY?  BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND THEN PROCEED.

My doctor told me also that it is better for you to eat five small meals a day than two or three larger meals.  It is healthier to eat a half a sandwich and an apple , and then two hours later eat the other half of the sandwich, with another piece of fruit.

Substitute fruit for any sort of sugar cravings you might have.  A good diet will allow you to eat all the fruit you want.  Remember this when you begin your lifestyle change, and also, think of this undertaking as a lifestyle change, not going on a diet.